Email platforms are making a move that deserves a closer look. They now recommend switching off open tracking across every campaign, no matter where the recipients live. For some senders, that is a fair precaution. For others, it removes useful data without solving the problem it was meant to address.

The original observation comes from a LinkedIn post by Nithyanandan Ramakrishna, which uses a simple farming analogy to make the point: a farmer uses salt to preserve his harvest, it works, so he adds the same salt to the water he stores for his crops. Same salt. Same intention. Different result. He knew salt could protect something. He did not yet know where that protection belonged.

That is roughly what is happening with email tracking settings today.

The Salt and the Water Problem

The farmer's mistake was not using salt. It was applying a tool that worked in one context to a completely different context without understanding why it worked in the first place.

Email platforms are making a similar move. A tracking pixel that raises privacy concerns for recipients in the EU may be perfectly acceptable for recipients in other jurisdictions. A blanket recommendation to disable tracking everywhere treats every campaign as if it carries the same regulatory exposure. It does not.

This matters for agencies running outbound email at scale. If you turn off tracking for every campaign because a platform told you to, you lose the ability to see engagement patterns, test subject lines, and understand which segments are responding. You also lose a signal that many teams use to prioritise follow-up. That is a real cost, and it is paid whether or not the regulation in question actually applies to your recipients.

Why the Setting Exists

Open tracking works through a small, often invisible image embedded in an email. When the recipient's email client loads that image, the sender's server records an open. That mechanism is what makes tracking possible, and it is also what creates the privacy question.

In some jurisdictions, particularly within the EU, rules around personal data and electronic communications can affect how and when you track recipient behaviour. Consent requirements, transparency obligations, and the definition of personal data all come into play. These rules are not identical across countries, and they do not apply uniformly to every sender or every campaign.

Understanding why the setting exists is the first step toward applying it well. A sender who knows the reasoning can look at their own audience, their own campaign, and their own legal basis, then decide whether tracking is appropriate. A sender who only knows the recommendation has no way to make that call.

What Context Looks Like in Practice

MailHeight shows you how many recipients in a campaign are in the EU or US, right beside the tracking control. That count does not prove consent. It does not certify compliance. What it does is make your audience's geography visible at the moment you decide, so you can pause and look at the rules that may apply instead of treating every campaign as the same.

That is why the information sits next to the control. A precaution can lower a risk. An explanation helps you understand that risk before your next decision. An outbound platform should help with both.

For agencies, this kind of context changes the workflow. Instead of a single global setting that applies to every client and every campaign, you get a prompt at the point of decision. If a campaign is going entirely to recipients in one region, you can see that. If it is mixed, you can see that too. Either way, you are making a choice with information rather than defaulting to the safest-sounding option.

What This Means for Deliverability

Tracking settings and deliverability are connected, though not always in the way people assume. Open tracking pixels can affect how some email clients and spam filters treat your messages. Some filters flag tracking pixels as a signal, and some recipients use image blocking by default, which means your open rates may undercount actual engagement regardless of your settings.

Turning tracking off does not automatically improve deliverability. What improves deliverability is sending relevant email to people who expect to hear from you, with proper authentication in place. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records tell receiving servers that your messages are legitimate. A clean sending reputation, built through consistent volume and low complaint rates, matters more than whether a pixel is present.

That said, if you are sending to recipients in jurisdictions where tracking raises concerns, and you have no clear basis for tracking, disabling it for those campaigns is a reasonable precaution. The point is not that tracking is always fine. The point is that the decision should be made with context, not applied blindly.

A Practical Framework for Agencies

Here is how to think about tracking settings across a client portfolio.

First, know where your recipients are. If you cannot answer that question for a given campaign, you are not ready to decide on tracking. Geography is not the only factor, but it is a starting point.

Second, separate the legal question from the deliverability question. They overlap, but they are not the same. A campaign can be legally fine and still land in spam. A campaign can be legally risky and still deliver. Treat them as two separate reviews.

Third, document your reasoning. If you disable tracking for a campaign, note why. If you leave it on, note why. This protects you with clients and creates a record you can refer back to if questions come up later.

Fourth, do not let a platform default replace your judgement. Defaults are useful when you have no other information. Once you have information, use it.

The Bigger Point

The farmer in the analogy was not wrong to trust salt. He was wrong to assume that because it worked once, it worked everywhere. Email platforms that recommend disabling tracking across every campaign are making a similar assumption. The recommendation is not malicious, and for some senders it is exactly right. But a recommendation without context is just a default, and defaults are not decisions.

For agencies running outbound email, the goal should be to understand the tools you use well enough to apply them where they belong. That means knowing why a setting exists, who it protects, and what you give up when you change it. It means having visibility into your audience at the moment you make the call.

An outbound platform should help with both: lowering risk and explaining it. When the information sits next to the control, you get the chance to pause and think. That pause is where good decisions happen.